Tears As PM Apologises To Forgotten Australians

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"Prime Minister Kevin Rudd made an emotional apology on Monday to half-a-million ""Forgotten Australians"" who faced sexual abuse, violence and forced labour in childcare homes over a period of decades.
Victims among the 1,000 people who packed Parliament House for the address burst into tears as Rudd detailed heart-rending cases of neglect in Australias orphanages and institutions from 1930 to 1970.
""We come together today to offer our nations apology. To say to you, the Forgotten Australians, and those who were sent to our shores as children without their consent, that we are sorry,"" he said.
""Sorry that as children you were taken from your families and placed in institutions where so often you were abused. Sorry for the physical suffering, the emotional starvation and the cold absence of love, of tenderness, of care.
""Sorry for the tragedy, the absolute tragedy, of childhoods lost. Childhoods spent instead in austere and authoritarian places where names were replaced by nu